I finally purchased a 13″ retina MacBook Pro for my birthday/business/a desperately needed upgrade. I’m mostly happy to be back to Mac for the first time since I was a teenager, but I’m still struggling with more than a few aspects of this transition.

I’ve become a bit of an Apple nerd without a Mac after Grant gave me a first-gen iPhone in 2007, and later introduced me to the 5by5 network and its current and former hosts right around the time Back to Work was starting. So I feel like I was well prepared for this move back to Mac in some ways, but also had my expectations built up unreasonably high by the Cult of Mac in other ways.

The whole concept that “things just work [better]” on Mac is what convinced me I needed to switch over, but Mac isn’t as flawless as I had dreamed up in my fairyland of operating system dreams. These are just some musings from a not-very-power-user who pays attention to the little details.

Cons:

Safari: Man, Safari is buggy. I thought the default browser would be all seamless and gorgeous, but it’s all sad and weird. Plus, perhaps I’ve whined about this excessively already on my social networks, but the lack of favicons in the bookmarks bars is a difficult adjustment for me. I cram a LOT in there and use the visual favicon indicator as a stand-in site name. This is a snippet of the first THIRD of my bookmarks bar, for example:

I also just love the customization that browsers like Chrome allows. I don’t know if Safari even supports extensions/add-ons/whatever, but I haven’t even bothered trying. Chrome is my go-to even on this new machine.

Hardware woes: My hardware is finicky, and I think I can safely say it’s my new rMBP’s fault, and not a PEBKAC thing. (I’m full of self-doubt about anything I deem an issue, but Grant’s 15″ work MacBook Pro helps us isolate Virginia Issues vs. Real Issues, and it turns out all this is real.) My Thunderbolt ports are wonky with HDMI display; I had to switch to HDMI-only to make things work properly. My external Logitech wireless keyboard regularly fails to correctly transmit my typing, even with fresh batteries and at the same physical distance as my old Dell laptop. It misses huge swaths of letters or just takes a full ten seconds to respond sometimes, which is maddening. And I don’t always realize it happened, because I type easily 100 WPM, so sometimes my email address gets entered like this:

This is supposed to read gentlesouls @ my full name dot com shut up yes I buy grandma footwear sometimes what of it

And my special Evoluent mouse was a bitch to set up with outdated custom drivers. My Logitech wireless mice don’t have the same sensitivity as I’d like, no matter how much I futz with the settings. And the trackpad system settings, while awesome with gestures, contained a few options that were so new to me I inadvertently set them up in a way that made it damn near impossible to use that mouse. That last one is my own fault, but it was interesting how the settings allowed me to fall into a fail-hole. (A Genius pointed this one out to me and I felt like a real ass that I’d actually taken the thing in thinking my trackpad was broken.)

Screen woes: External monitors are weird with this thing. It is MADDENING that I can’t have any program full-screen-ified on either display without the other display turning to 100% Useless Linen. What the fuck is that!? An Apple employee told me on the DL that that’s a bug Apple has no urgency about fixing. This is insanity-making to me; I love having the smaller screen full-screened on something visual. As of right now, I manually futz with the window size to accomplish this, but it’s a lot of extra mousing which is rough for me ergonomically, and it seems like it should be one of those things that “just works,” you know? The good news is that sites with embedded video tend to allow THAT component to full-screenify just fine. And then their video looks terrible on my awesome screen, haha. Lastly, I got really comfortable with the way I could snap and lock in Windows 7, and I miss that but I’m too cheap to pay for Moom or the other recommendations I’ve gotten about that sort of thing. I’ll get there, though! I also find the retina/non retina transition a little awkward, but less so now that I’m using straight-up HDMI and not Thunderbolt for my display.

Form over function in physical design: Maybe I’m crazy, but I actually find the latch-notch to open the screen incredibly awkward. I basically always have to do it two-handed, which is surprisingly inconvenient, and I often wind up greasing up the screen right around the FaceTime cam when I’m opening it, which of course is annoying. I miss the feeling of something that snaps shut and kinda springs open.

I also find that, not only am I short the number of USB ports I need, but they’re all way too close together when you have everything plugged in at once as I usually do. I had to buy an external USB hub, and when Grant got me this adorable Kikerland one, it didn’t work because the ports are just barely too close to one another so I can only use it with either no Ethernet to Thunderbolt adapter and charger, or no HDMI display. Just annoying given that these things were spaced out differently on my Dell. I foresee more annoyance with, say, certain USB memory drives and whatnot. I’m always annoyed when an admittedly pretty chassis gets in the way of actually making the  stuff inside more useful. (Side note; I don’t think I’ll ever start pronouncing “chassis” correctly.)

Software weirdness: I find it SO awkward to mount an application to the Application whatever on the whatsit. What the fuck kind of user experience is that? It’s also weird as hell to give permissions to different levels of developers.

Some of the Apple programs make me crazy, too. I hate how the menus in visual-tasked programs like Preview are text instead of visual, so it takes me nine years to find the way to highlight an element of a screenshot with a rectangle. (YES, annotate makes sense. But so does selecting a rectangle-shaped box like I’m used to, haha.) And this one is iTunes specific, but I see Mike Monteiro is as pissed as I am here:

You seriously have to click the fucking little cloud icon for EACH song you want to download?

— Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) May 15, 2013

 

I don’t understand why I can’t delete selected files by pressing delete or backspace, and why there’s no command-plus-key listed when I right click them with my admittedly non-Mac mouse. Such keyboard shortcuts are displayed for other types of activities. Why the heck wouldn’t there be a shortcut for such a crucial activity, and why wouldn’t it be listed? I finally looked it up and figured out it was CMD+backspace, which I’m sure I’m capitalizing and punctuating like a noob.* But why make me blind from that option in the righty-clicky menu that’s probably called something else on Mac? Is this one of those instances of Mac trying to make things better for me? I take a LOT of screenshots that I subsequently delete, so I don’t appreciate being forced to use the less ergo-friendly mouse-select-drag option or to look up how the fuck to perform a simple operation, which I also don’t appreciate now requiring two keys instead of one.

In fact, I’m annoyed that multiple things now require a multiple-key combo to work. PC keyboards have a Print Screen button; how great would it be if that still worked on Mac? And cropping a screenshot in Preview requires a splat K. (Shut up; you know what I mean.) And so help me god, I miss the Clear Desktop option SO MUCH. All I’ve figured out is Option-Command-H while in Chrome, then manually minimizing Chrome. I know I’m doing it wrong; I know. But you see what I mean about missing a one-clicky path? I guess those weren’t so much obvious as habit for me, but the work of setting up new habits makes me sad. I also find it super fiddly how much futzing I have to do to mimic basic behavior like tabbing through fields, etc. from a PC.

I also find it super weird how photos work. I love importing my iOS photos via iPhoto, but then those don’t show up in any kind of browsable path when I want to upload them to a blog post, for example. I can only access them by dragging and dropping them from iPhoto to a drag-and-drop-friendly upload option. It just seems weird. Again, I’m sure there’s some trick I don’t yet know, but why wouldn’t I be able to get to them via a standard file-browsing path? Why make everything so difficult?

And Finder. Ah, Finder. When I search for files, it does show me all these fucking developer files by default. WHY would I want that enabled by default? If you assumed I was too dumb a user to be allowed to delete things, do I really want crap from some JSON library or whatever? Just a strange thing to me. (I usually use an alternative to Finder, based on helpful recommendations from people like you, but still.)

I also found it insanely confusing to set up network connections within our home. Grant had to do it for me, and I still have to enter a password (?) every time I want to get shit off my PC laptop. It’s also weird how you have to manually turn on and off Wi-Fi. In 2013. WHY are we not yet at the point where the assumption is that if I have an Ethernet cable plugged in, you should use that, and you should just switch to Wi-Fi when that’s the only option? I swear my computer back in like 2004 managed that decision making well, and yet the new shit gets all confused by various options. Not a problem exclusive to Mac, but still!

Oh, and when I set up my Ethernet connection, it was surprisingly non-simple. I had to get an Apple employee to walk me through several confusing, in-depth network settings changes that were necessary to use the Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter successfully, which seemed weird since again, Apple shit should “just work.” Thankfully, he solved the issue, but it was definitely a software thing and not a network thing, which just seemed strange and needlessly complex. Ethernet is definitely not dead and definitely not just for power users in my mind. I also really would’ve appreciated just having a damn Ethernet port instead of having to buy a $30 thingy, but oh well. :)

What the fuck messages and restarts: Mostly, this machine is rad. But sometimes, when a program goes into Deep Failure Mode, no amount of force-quitting will actually make it quit. Sometimes that program is iTunes, and it won’t stop screaming Katy Perry in a Starbucks all of a fucking sudden, and the software-tied mute button doesn’t work, and the thing won’t quit, and the machine won’t shut down, and I have to manually press the fucking power button in 2013 and look like an ass (and yes I know I should’ve had the headphones plugged in but so help me god sometimes I’m That Person, OK? And I’m sorry. But I miss the hardware-tied mute button on my 1999 laptop that worked as fast as my reflexes did, rather than as fast as my locked-up OS did.) I’m sure I fucked up the closing parenthesis with closing punctuation rule there, but you get the idea.

Oh, and sometimes I get messages like this for no goddamn intelligible reason at all, usually from iTunes but sometimes from other things:

What. This is worse than every Windows error message ever. OK not really, but still. What?

Yeah, and sometimes I also get updates like this, which I SWEAR the Cult of Mac promised would happen like never! To be fair, they’re rarer than the non-updatey kind, but still!

Surprisingly weird ports: The USB, HDMI, and Thunderbolt ports made out of metal feel really low quality whenever I’m plugging things in or removing them. I suppose, being used to slightly flexible plastic-encased ports, they just feel scratchy or like I’m damaging them, or they don’t perfectly fit even the first-party cables I plug in and out. I don’t yet have a dock (I’m kinda holding out for an Apple display in the new skinny iMac chassis, fingers crossed for retina though I know it’s unlikely) so I plug things in and remove them a LOT. Obviously the Mag whatever charger is amazing and fuck you for making it different than the one we use to charge my husband’s 2011ish MBP, but everything USB and Thunderbolt feels… off. Low quality. In a way that really surprises me given the rest of the thing’s admittedly superior quality and design, you know?

Spinny cursor of death: That still exists! I kinda miss when it was black and white, though. I’m surprised how often it has crashed, and how it behaves when it does—usually when this thing triggers there’s no amount of force quitting that can solve it, and I have to shut the damn machine off with the power button which freaks me out because SSD. I guess I expected less crashitude but what do I know? Not much about what causes that. So, oh well, at least for now. Windows crashes weren’t vastly less or more frequent, but I feel like they required a full reboot less often. I don’t exactly have great data on this, though. :)

EXPENSIVE software: Holy fuck am I broke. I’ve spent more on software for my new Mac since March 15th than I have in the entire past fifteen years of PC usage, if you don’t count MMO subscriptions. I appreciate the cool development community, but damn. At this rate I’m going to have to stop, like, drinking fancy-ass Seattle cocktails when we go out. (Hahahahaha good one, Self.)

Pros:

RETINAAAA: Oh my GOD the retina screen. It’s just mind-blowing. Everything is so crisp and clear and delightful. This screeeeen. I don’t even mind how I can see how much of the Internet uses crap fonts and images, and how janky most favicons look when they haven’t received The Gruber Treatment. I don’t care. It’s glorious. I use it for reading more than I expected because of the screen, though I expect to iPad read more once I get a retina Mini. C’mon, guys, don’t hold out on me.

Beauty: The industrial design is phenomenal. Everything looks and feels more attractive, despite my whining about the pseudo-latch and ports above. I can’t believe how sexy that aluminum is, especially after my cheap Dell laptop from 2007 that had a broken Ethernet card slot and a cracking, creaking hinge on one side. The elegance of opening and closing and using and touching the thing is amazing. And I love the matte black whatever of the hinge in the back. I could do with less bezel, but oh my God shut up Virginia you are so privileged.

Ergonomics: The built-in keyboard is a lot less ergo-unfriendly than I expected given my crazy tennis elbow. I think the switches on these keys are kinder to me. It still hurts to use for long periods of time, since the basic position of a flat rectangular keyboard plus trackpad is all wrong for me, but I’m broken so that’s unsurprising. And I normally find trackpads WAY rough on my tennis elbow, but this one is better (though still sometimes painful because I tend to overuse it). I’m surprised at how OK I’ve become with the freaky-ass new scrolling direction, too.

Gestures: The gestures on the trackpad are amazing! And so useful! I haven’t even bound anything special yet, but the default ones are fantastic and intuitive and I just love them. The pinching to zoom in and out ROCKS and I discovered it so naturally.

Messages: I know everyone whines about Messages on Mac, but I love itso far. Because my tennis elbow is oh so severe, anything I can do on a Big Keyboard instead of an iOS screen is helpful ergonomically, and I tend to message a lot with my husband. This makes that way easier. I also have terrible phone behavior and I appreciate not having to pay attention to that brick when I’m on The Big Screen computing. There have been a few weird glitches where messages seemed to disappear, or temporarily failed to be transmitted properly, but for the most part I’m a huge fan of having them on my actual computer.

SSD OMG: That hard drive! So fast! So quiet! AND DID I MENTION SO FAST!? SSD FTW 4EVA. BFF. I love it so much. (I paid to upgrade to 512GB, in case you were wondering.)

Sync City: I’m still figuring out how exactly to make everything play nice, and certain things don’t sync the way I want, but for the most part everything does sync across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. And when it works, it ROCKS. I love using Photo Stream; I love having text snippets theoretically sync in TextExpander (haven’t actually made that work yet, but I will); I love OmniFocus syncing even though I still don’t fully grasp how to get the most out of that damn software; I love more than anything that simple, boring-ass Notes syncs so I can edit and clear out items on a Big Keyboard and have them show up all edited on my phone when I’m on the go. Love Reminders syncing too. And Tweetbot, although it seems a little wonky and I wish it synced drafts across platforms. But still. Having a Mac opens my eyes to more of the benefits of being in the Apple ecosystem with my other devices.

iPhoto imports: I really love iPhoto. The way it snags stuff off my devices, sorts it, and deletes it is so much more helpful than the janky experience of attempting to do this with no helpful software on my PC. It’s by no means a perfect program, but I just appreciate something clearing off my phone of all those large photo and video files so I can keep track of everything while maintaining room for music on the go. Simple, but I really value it.

General love: And obviously, the thing just runs. The battery life is nice, the extra cable thingy they include is nice, the initial setup wasn’t horrible (I set it up as a new machine), and the memory kicks ass so it can handle the gabillion tabs I have open and programs I have running at any given moment. I love the thing and am glad I bought it, despite the whinings above. I guess I just expected the Pro column to be longer and the Con column to be shorter, you know? Still learning, though, so this will hopefully change over time. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you think I’m failing to grasp a certain set of helpful tips or software suites or what have you! Anything to get me over the New User hurdle is greatly appreciated. :)

 

 

*Also, fuck autocorrect for frequently changing “noob” to “boob” and having Marco Arment call me out about it on Twitter. Dammit. Not used to a global autocorrect yet! Mostly more helpful than harmful, but that learning curve suuuucks when suddenly every device I own is prone to Damn You, Autocorrect-isms!

We all know that many big tech figures hate email. Merlin, Dan, and Marco have all been pretty vocal about this, and I totally get it—they’re media figures in a way I’m not so they get flooded in a way I don’t. But I still maintain that email is the best medium for oh so many tasks if you’re a Regular Person like I am (at least for now, heh). But I’m clearly still swimming upstream; even my non-tech contact points prefer non-email communication. And sometimes, that drives me insane.

There are multiple families on my block who have cats and travel a lot. My husband and I have sort of become the go-to kitty sitters, but as the neighbors get more and more close to us friendship-wise, they’re more prone to just texting us their vacation dates and just dropping off a key whenever. This really, really doesn’t work for me. Like, those cats are gonna fucking starve doesn’t work for me.

When I receive a piece of information that absolutely requires a follow-up action on my part, I really want that to come to me over a medium that allows for robust customization. I want to star/flag/mark that shit unread, and I want to forward it to my husband so he knows too, and I want to have it potentially integrate with my calendar via that iPhone linked text event thingy (shit, now I’ve lost my technical audience. Sorry. You know what I mean.) so I can make sure that the necessary reminders and alarms happen so I will break my routine to see that your pets are cared for.

This is important. This is not fleeting. This needs to be delivered to me in a way that doesn’t disappear from my home screen if I answer a phone call. This needs to be “processed” in the Getting Things Done sense of the word. I care about your cats enough to be kind of a pain in the ass about this. But three separate households of older-than-me, less-technical-than-me neighbors all texted this request, and only followed up via email when I prodded them to. And even then they sort of maybe needed reminding to email, or an explanation why that medium was necessary.

Now, I can’t demand that level of communications catering in any social setting; I can only demand it when someone is asking a favor of me. I feel like in that context, it’s fine for me to dictate the parameters necessary for them to get that favor done. But I ALWAYS prefer an actual email if the subject isn’t something fleeting or immediate, and you know what? Bonus points if your email is old-school enough to contain a signature with things like your cell and even your land line in it. I still find value in that convention, and I hope it doesn’t go the way of Facebook because I really hate so much about this new communication era. (OK, I mostly just hate how the stupid graphical smileys Facebook inserts will never stop screwing with line height. Fine. There you have it.)

 

Neighbors, I love you. If you somehow happen to read this, I’m not like mad about you! I’m mad about the way communication is shifting in our entire culture to a way that I’m clearly not good at catching up with. Your cats are fantastic. Please feed ours in early June. I trust this blog post will be sufficient notice of this request JUST KIDDING OMG THAT’S A JOKE LOVE YOU GUYS. <3

We order pizza kind of a lot. We shouldn’t, but we do; it’s easy and  yummy and one of the few delivery options we have at our house. We usually get Pagliacci, because it’s delicious and predictable and they have great customer service and even a few healthy options. But every once in a while, we like to switch it up and try ordering from different pizza places, just to see if there’s anything better we’ve been missing.

The other non-chainy pizza joint that delivers to us is called Stacia’s. Stacia’s is insanely expensive, but they offer insanely good deals with ValPak coupons. Now, I hate coupons, and I hate unsolicited envelopes full of small pieces of paper, but I get that some older-school businesses firmly believe in the whole direct mail marketing model. And ValPak now has an iPhone and iPad app with mobile coupons, so that helps a ton. Often not every deal is listed there that would appear on a print coupon, but this is a nice little compromise for a nerd like me.

I just fired up the ValPak app, and not only does it have deals for Stacia’s, but it also has a neat little feature where you can export a specific deal to Passbook. It’s a bit cumbersome (and hitchy and takes forever even on a solid Wi-Fi connection), but it’s nice of them to think of that, and I like to think it could minimize annoyance for both customers and businesses, right? Right. Except no. I clicked on the “Disclaimers” link just to double-check, and lookie here:

Sooo, uh, mobile coupons are great according to ValPak, but not necessarily ValPak’s advertisers. Fine. Maybe they’re just extra-careful with these because some customers abuse them? (It’s worth noting that I’ve totally used the mobile ValPak app before to buy pizza from these guys. Maybe I’M the reason they added this fun little disclaimer.)

I called the place up, and asked about this disclaimer. The guy who picked up was extremely befuddled.. He said, and I quote, “You can’t just print it out?” I suppose I could, but I don’t wanna. A) Our printer keeps conking out from expensive low ink reserves, and I don’t want to futz with it for half an hour to make sure it’s working only to deplete its ink for this. B) I shouldn’t effing have to, right? The whole point is that it’s mobile, paperless, painless, and your delivery dude even gets a little Passbook QR code to scan. Why print? And C) the guy was kind of a dick about it, so now I really don’t want to; I want to muster up the gentleness to coax him into letting me use the goddamn iPhone coupon. I explain that our printer isn’t working, that we’ve used mobile coupons before and haven’t ordered in several months (i.e. I’m not using this every night), and that I don’t think printing it out is how this is meant to work. This last bit clearly wasn’t the right tack. He immediately switches to Confusion Masked by Authoritative Dismissive Voice, and says, “Yeah, we don’t do that phone stuff. Paper coupon only.”

Sigh. “That phone stuff.” Why build the tech, why integrate the feature, if business owners are too old-school to learn how to play nice with the new tools? Can ValPak train businesses to figure this out? Is there no number I could read to you to have you write down so you know I’m not allowed to claim this deal a second time, just as if I’d handed you a piece of paper? Must you charge so much in your base menu that I’m unwilling to conduct any kind of transaction with you unless I have a valid coupon for it?

I ordered from Pagliacci.

 

I’ve wanted to make an iPhone app for ages now, but it’s always been a far-off “when I have the time and energy to learn how to code” thing. Recently, I realized that I have an urgently needed app in mind that’s based on Siracusa’s Annoyance-driven development: All the existing apps in this space are ugly and unstable, and all of them lack certain core features. I recently realized that I can either keep saying I’d like to make this app well into my forties, by which time I probably still won’t have managed to teach myself enough coding to pull it off, or I can feel out the developer community and see if anyone is interested in helping out on the coding end while I tackle art, production, marketing, QA, et cetera.

I want to make a calendar that tracks women’s health and reproductive cycles. I know, boring, but stay with me. ALL of the apps in that space are so ugly it makes me want to cry.

 

As you can see, these apps are almost exclusively pink or lilac or -maybe- some other pastel shade. They’re 80% flower-driven design (because I’m a delicate flower? F-ck off. Because when I got my period I flowered as a woman? Also f-ck off. Because this whole bleeding inconveniently every month is all a beautiful part of nature, therefore look at this flower? Shut up and f-ck off. Because women run around in a field in Massengil commercials? Go douche yourself and then f-ck off). Ahem. I don’t care for the look. I’m betting that most men and women who read this post will agree with me, even if they wouldn’t have used quite as many F-bombs to make the point.

Colors and motifs aside, these apps have stretched UI elements and horrible fonts and weirdly low contrast text and some of  the worst textures/skeuomorphic design choices that make Podcasts.app look like a home run. They have no idea what “retina” means. And they all seem to be made by men who don’t understand what features and design choices makes this type of app useful and appealing to women.

Marco Arment noticed this dearth of decent design when he and his wife had their baby boy Adam, so he created a breastfeeding timer app with laudably simple design. When he first released this app, he mentioned that similar pregnancy-related stuff, like baby naming apps, were just appalling. That hasn’t changed yet. His beautiful, clean, simple, and functional design eventually inspired me to try to apply the same principles to a cycle-tracking app.

Aside from design complaints, there are also functionality problems in this category. These apps crash constantly. They have  no calendar integration and no ability to export data to iCal or other common calendar formats, and no helpful push messaging options*. They require you to input made-up guesstimates or to configure data that you probably don’t have if you need a cycle-tracking app. They generally exist in a freemium model, but the freemium apps are so bad and the features described in the paid versions so pointless, that I’ve never been inspired to shell out for a “premium” version. (Neither has any woman I’ve ever met.)

Furthermore, why does anyone bother tracking their cycle in the first place? Besides knowing when your period will arrive, there are two basic things such an app should be able to help you do:

1. Get pregnant.
2. NOT get pregnant.

Guess which feature is missing from every single app I’ve tested? That’s right: none of them help track your cycle to avoid making a baby. Read that over again. Of every single app I’ve ever tested (and I’ve been searching for a good fit ever since the iOS App Store came into existence), NONE of them are designed to help you avoid an unwanted pregnancy. There are tons of ways to optimize becoming pregnant, with varying windows of optimal conception, but all you can do is aggregate said data and attempt to extract a reasonable “safe” window. Heck, there’s even an app that lets you select a desired birth date or Zodiac sign, and back-calculate an ideal window of conception (!!), yet there is no choice that teaches women how to avoid having sex when they might be likely to get unintentionally pregnant. The rhythm method (as it’s called) is a valid primary or secondary birth control method for so many people, but you wouldn’t know it from the iOS marketplace.

So, I want to create an app that includes both let’s-make-a-baby and let’s-not-make-a-baby modes. I want something that integrates with iCal and ideally Google Cal (or vcal), or any other calendar that the iPhone community might suggest. I want logical, configurable push notifications to shove some tampons in my purse, or that I should start using condoms to avoid unwanted pregnancies for the next X days. I want a non-embarrassing reminder that I’m probably ovulating and should go jump my husband even if he’s in the middle of a complicated Tomb Raider level. (Er, for example.) I want a clean, non-condescending design that my husband wouldn’t mind having on his own phone, in case he felt like picking up tampons or jumping me in the middle of a complicated blog post. And most of all, I want everything to just WORK. (And if there are useful features that I’m not thinking of or that come to my attention over time, I’d like the app built on a framework that lets me layer in new features.)

It’s a long shot that any developers out there would want to take time out of their busy profitable coding endeavors to help fill this marketplace void by coding such an app. But if I can talk you into helping on the coding end, I’ll do literally everything else and will of course share revenue on the app. And heck, if I get a positive response to this, maybe I’ll start investigating crowd-sourcing the development of this app, so I can really get excellent design and programming without feeling like I need to learn three new careers of my own to pull it off.  I may also circle back to the realization that I have to do every aspect myself, including programming, and that’s OK too. I know there are more and more resources available to teach me, and that most developers aren’t wild about the idea of a revenue-sharing model since they’re just as stretched thin as I am. But I’m kinda supposed to be writing a book and growing my business and generally earning money via other time-consuming channels, and therefore this app probably isn’t going to happen in the immediate future if it remains a one-woman project. So if you think you might know someone who would want to connect, please put us in touch!

 

*To be fair, one app recently added a push notification option for tampons. However, it can’t be adjusted or configured to read custom text or to notify at a different time than the app’s auto-calculated choice, and you can’t export any such reminder to useful places like Reminders/Calendar/Mail, let alone OmniFocus, Drafts, Evernote, etc.

I’ve been meaning to craft a more thoughtful and ever-delayed post on leaving my job and going the solopreneur route, but I realized that maybe I should get something out there in the meantime to pimp the fact that I was on QUIT!. Twice! QUIT! is a new 5by5 show, in which Dan and his various co-hosts take calls from listeners about quitting their corporate stooge jobs and/or redefining themselves in their work life. My first call-in appearance was on Episode 2 - Everyone Gets Fired, when I called while squatting in an empty conference room at my corporate stooge contract job. And the next time was Episode 6 - The Voices In Your Head, after actually quitting, in which I got some great advice about how to scale up my business to be more financially sustainable.

Both times were SO phenomenally helpful, and downright fun. In addition to getting valuable input from the actual hosts,I also got loads of great suggestions and resources from the other listeners and chatroom jackals. I’ve had my hands full following up on leads, researching information products and referral structures, and generally getting my head back into the solo game. I’m SO excited to be devoting my whole self to my side thing, and even if it doesn’t pan out in the long run, I feel like I’m finally giving it the shot that it has deserved this whole time.

This guy is my only coworker now.

Here’s a big quitter’s e-hug to Dan, Haddie, Shlok, Mantwan, Michael K, Alex/aomind, T.J. Barber, _Funk, and everyone else who chimed in with words of support. I love what I do, and I’m looking forward to finding a way to make it work and make me enough money to stay at home with future kids and keep doing creative things that make me happy. I even added blog categories for “podcasts,” “freelancing,” and “working from home,” because those things are becoming increasingly important in my quotidian existence and my big-picture plans.

If anyone out there is thinking about quitting their job and/or has always wanted to try a business venture of their own, I urge you to listen live (usually Fridays at 2 PM Pacific) and try to call in if you can. Call in live at 512-518-5714 or leave a voicemail at 512-222-8141. Dan would love to hear from you; I’d love to hear you on the air; and most importantly, I think you’ll love the advice and support you get (even if it’s not what you were hoping for). Okay, mushy PSA over; back to your regularly scheduled complaining in my next post. :)

On this week’s The iPhone 5 episode of The (New) Talk Show, John Gruber mentioned that Apple is perfectly happy to leave battery pack accessories up to third-party vendors. He’s right, of course, but what stuck with me is that they’re STILL leaving a vast number of important peripherals up to third-party folks. Back in 2008 I whined about issues I was having finding an acceptable vehicle charger, and long story short, I still have those same issues. I briefly got decent audio quality using a special Kensington noise-reducing cable which broke after like two months. I find it interesting (and frustrating, and silly) that four and a half years after that initial frustration, I still have to seek vital solutions like charging on the go from a company other than Apple.

Why is this? Because they know that they can’t provide a perfect solution. They don’t want to have to admit that even though playing audio via an AUX cable while simultaneously charging via a cigarette lighter can produce wildly differing results in different vehicles. My Scion xA always makes a train-tracks-squealy-brakes noise when I play and charge at the same time, but the same sound wasn’t present in my friends’ cars. Unless they can control the customer experience more closely, they don’t think it’s worth their time and effort to produce a first-party solution to this particular niche of the marketplace. They’re probably right, of course. The R&D and production of a flawless system (which would probably have to incorporate an unwieldy special audio cable like the Kensington above) would not be worth the number of units they’d sell at a reasonable price.

But man, if they would just come out with a first-party solution that worked, I’d totally pay top dollar for it. I feel the same way about their defunct Bluetooth headset (I know it was crappy and unpopular, but it fit my ear with no snappy-onny thing and it synced with the OS so nicely while they still supported it)—I would happily pay another $100 for another inferior yet first-party Bluetooth headset, because even if it wasn’t the best headset on the market, it would be the best one for this particular phone that I still use and love. I wish Apple would pony up and make more peripherals—battery packs, better headphones, hands-free headsets, vehicle chargers, tripods, microphones for podcasting, external camera lens enhancements, you name it. The general iPhone population might not shell out top dollar, but I’d buy ‘em, and I know lots of other affluent nerds who would join me. And then we’d buy our casual iPhoner parents weird accessories for the holidays and everyone would win.

I was a relatively early adopter of the Cult of iPhone. Grant bought me a first-gen model a few months after it was released, and I’ve been an addict ever since. (I’m sure there are some fantastic other smartphones out there, but my 1st gen, 3GS and now 4S have never made me want to switch, even with some minor AT&T frustrations.) I have been using the sync functionality for a certain, limited number of podcasts since the first time I set up my first iPhone in 2007. I like sync. Sync used to like me back. So why, all of a sudden, does sync now suck?

Ever since I set up the 4S (as a brand new phone and not from a backup, just to be extrasupercareful not to import any glitches of yore) my sync functionality has been broken. iTunes regularly tries to load podcasts that I manually added once for a trip and then intentionally manually removed. This kicks me over the space limit and thus screws up some other syncery. It also attempts to sync to my phone even when I haven’t asked it to, even though I have all the relevant options un-checked. It thinks my phone is plugged in when it isn’t and thinks it isn’t when it is. It repeatedly says “The sync session failed to finish because the sync failed to start.” after I select the option to, ya know, sync. Half my podcasts that I do try to sync show up as greyed-out not-really-present content, which seems to mean they helpfully take up space but aren’t actually available for listening. If I then try to download one of these greyed-out podcasts that didn’t actually make it onto the phone via the iTunes app, the app frequently thinks the content is already downloaded and won’t let me grab it. When the app does allow me to download content that appears greyed-out on the phone,  iTunes on the PC then freaks out the next time I sync, as if it can’t handle this alternative reality in which its process didn’t work the first time around and there are now two copies of the same content. I’ve memorized the slightly obscure process to manually delete the phone’s last backup, but it never seems to help. I restart my computer more than ever now in order to try to combat these Appley problems, but to no avail. I’ve become familiar with error messages I’ve never seen before in my life, and I’m now accustomed to each sync attempt taking 45 minutes and at least three tries. I’m considering actually restoring my phone over this — yes, my approximately two and a half week old phone.

WTF? Where did sync go so very wrong? (And before Merlin Mann can get preachy about it, I should add that I don’t use iCloud, largely thanks to his prescient observations about its limitations.) I wonder how many other fairly savvy users are running into new glitches with old processes like I am. Siri doesn’t seem to understand my frustration, but at least I’ve trained her to curse on my behalf about it.

When three days in a row, you get woken up by a mysterious 1-800 caller who lets it ring JUST long enough to rouse you but not long enough for you to answer, and who never leaves a message, but keeps calling back so you eventually call THEM in frustration and ask what’s up and to try and get taken off their earlybird list, and it turns out they’re a collection agency, but they have no idea who you are or why someone has been calling your number over and over again without ever leaving a message, and you’re in the process of trying to qualify for a mortgage, so you want your credit to remain sparklingly perfect, and the collection guy’s all “Well, we usually call people when they’re in serious default and yes it definitely affects your credit, but let’s see, ah, I don’t… know… why you’re on your list,” and you ask if he thinks someone has been mis-dialing a number repeatedly at the same time each morning, and he agrees that that’s unlikely, and you ask if any other name is associated with your number, and he says no, and you ask him to look into it and please call back, and he never does, and you’re left annoyed and early-bird awakened and paranoid that you don’t get to buy a house because some idiot can’t hit the right digits or something. That’s what sucks.

Dear Bank of America Website: You should not default the radio button to having ‘Yes, remember this computer in the future’ selected. The default should either be nothing or NOT remembering it. SECURITY, PEOPLE.

Dear Google: You should not implement a feature that hides Labels that don’t have any useful content for me, but then have the hidden labels contain unread messages that then never get displayed. If you decide to implement such a ‘feature’ you should allow me to adjust settings to opt out of it.

Dear Shazam: Twitter integration only works if you allow users to modify the default tweet text, or if you make the default tweet text sufficiently un-douchey. But really you should just make it modifiable, come on.

Dear Chipotle iPhone App: You should tell me BEFORE I go to all the trouble of ordering via my iPhone that a) I cannot pay for my order via my iPhone at the location I have selected, and b) my order will never, ever, EVER get made before I arrive, thereby making iPhone ordering totally pointless.

TECHNOLOGY, YOU HAVE FAILED ME!

Courtesy of Gizmodo (via imgur via Digg).